


My Heart Will Go On

by JJBashir



Series: My Heart Will Go On [1]
Category: seaQuest
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Missing Persons, Missing in Action, missing seaQuest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23723686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJBashir/pseuds/JJBashir
Summary: Six months after the disappearance of the seaQuest, its sole 'survivor' speaks.
Relationships: Katherine Hitchcock/Benjamin Krieg, Tim O'Neill/Original Female Character(s)
Series: My Heart Will Go On [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708750





	My Heart Will Go On

**Author's Note:**

> This is the start of a 4-part series within the greater [Aislinn MacMurdo Chronicles](https://archiveofourown.org/series/60416) that deals with the disappearance and the ten year gap between season 2 and season 3 of seaQuest DSV. It was originally written in 1997, at the height of the popularity of the movie 'Titanic'. The series titles are all taken from the Original Soundtrack, written by James Horner.

Lieutenant Benjamin Krieg stood outside of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., a surprisingly cold wind biting through his coat. It was the middle of the summer, yet this wintry blast chilled him to his already cold heart. He tightened his arm around the shoulders of his ex-wife, and fiancée, Commander Katherine Hitchcock.

"How is she, Katie?" he asked.

Katie looked up, her crystal blue eyes filled with a deep sorrow. "She's--I don't know how she is, Ben. She's hardly said a thing since it happened. I wish she wasn't doing this-- it's not for US. It's a big show for the politicos and their--"

"I know, I know," Ben said. "I'm worried for her, too, Katie," he said, wrapping his arms around his once and future wife.

A grey limousine pulled up in front of the church. A UEO uniformed driver hopped out, then opened the rear door closest to the couple. The first person to step out was Dr. Kristin Westphalen, a familiar face and former head of the Science Department of the seaQuest. She rushed over to Ben and Katie, simply embracing them. She'd spend the night at Poseidon's Point with the featured speaker at this UEO memorial service, and the flight up from Florida was silent, as Kristin had tried her damnedest to talk her friend out of this.

"Any luck?" Katie asked her.

"None," Kristin said, in her clipped British-accented voice. "She's being thoroughly Scottish about this whole thing--"

"You mean stubborn?" Ben commented mildly.

Kristen nodded.

"Sainted Begorrah," Ben muttered, half jokingly.

Another person stepped out of the limo. Lieutenant Aislinn Elizabeth MacMurdo was in her dress white uniform, her chocolate brown hair pulled back in its customary ponytail, her green eyes already filled with tears behind her silver framed glasses. She looked every inch the quintessential UEO naval officer, right down to her spit-shined boots. She took two steps from the car then hesitated, almost as if she would fall under the great weight on her shoulders. She'd carried that weight ever since she came back from her forced medical leave from the seQuest, only to find it had been missing for a week, with no trace of it found.

That was six months ago.

Ben, Katie and Kristin jumped forward, only to be stopped by her outstretched hand. She paused for a moment to align her posture, then walked two more steps and stood next to Ben.

His arm automatically went around her shoulders. "How you holdin' up, kid?" he asked.

She looked up at him, her emerald eyes hazy with tears. "I think I'll make it, boyo," she whispered.

"You DON'T have to do this," Ben started to say.

"Aye, Ben," she replied. "Aye, I do. I'm--I'm the only one left who CAN."

Katie grabbed her best friend's arms. "Linnie," she said, her voice broken.

"Dinnae worry, Katie," she whispered. "I'm not alone. It's only a memorial service, after all. I WON'T believe they're dead."

Kristin touched her hair softly. "I know you're hurting, darling...and we miss them--"

"Kristin, DON'T coddle me like I'm a child!" she exploded. "I CANNAE believe they're dead! If I start believin' that, I'll go mad, I swear, I'll go mad!" she sobbed.

The press was just beginning to gather and Linn's three friends shielded her with their bodies against the growing crowds and lights and clicking cameras. They'd spent the better part of the last six months protecting her from the media frenzy that surrounded 'the last survivor' of the seaQuest. "We'd better go in, " Ben said," before the jackals start to feed."

"Linn," Katie said as they walked inside. "Do you know what you're going to say?"

Linn nodded. "Aye," she said. "Though I'm sure they're gonna throw me in the nearest psych ward when they hear it."

Katie shook her head. "No, they won't," she told her best friend. "I won't let them."

"I feel him, Katie," Linn nearly sobbed. "I feel him here," she said, touching her hand to her heart.

"I know," she said. "Just tell them not to give up either, OK?"

Linn smiled ruefully, a ghost of the brilliant grin of the woman Katie Hitchcock knew and loved. "Promise you'll visit me in the crazy house when they lock me up ?"

Katie smiled. "Of course I will. I'll be in the room next door."

They all sat in the front row--Ben, Katie, Kristin, Joshua Levin, Chief Crocker, Shan--all those who had once served on seaQuest. The families of various officers had made their way to Washington as well--The Ortizs and the O'Neills in force. The Fords had just flown in that morning, and the only persons not represented there in name was that of Lucas Wolenczak and Nathan Hale Bridger. For the first time, it didn't bother Linn, as she sat in the right seat on the dais directly behind the pulpit. _He couldn't be bothered with Lucas before, why start now?_ she mused bitterly in the depths of her soul. As for Nathan--well, we was with his family...wherever it was they were. She barely heard the words of the priest and then General Secretary McGath as they spoke of the 'unspeakable tragedy' that brought them, and the world, here today.

 _What a crock,_ she though ruefully. _They've been 'speaking' of it for months now._ Linn could see the light of the hundreds of cameras, the flash of a thousand bulbs as they focused in on the families, the ones who were left behind. She gripped her hands in her lap tighter. _Och, Tim,_ she whispered in her heart. _Why have ye gone and left me here all alone, eudail?_ she wanted to cry aloud.

_I haven't left you, Linnie, my love, my beautiful dream,_ she heard, the voice barely by her ear. _I'm always with you, in your heart---like you're always with me. You HAVE to go on, Linn--just like we said. Live our love, Aislinn, my dream._

She touched her lips with her fingers to stifle the gasp. One of their most common bonds, was their belief that they had been linked, before time, before anything, and that they would be together forever. They had even talked it over, as they had watched 'Titanic'--the last GOOD one that had come out in '97--in Poseidon's Point, their house overlooking the sea just outside of Cape New Quest.

Once, he had asked her what she would do if anything happened to him. She had told him that she'd probably die about ten minutes after she found out. "I cannae live without you, you know that," she said.

He had turned his serious brown eyes on her as the final credits rolled and the theme began to play. "No, Linn," he said. "I don't think I'd like that very much. I'd rather you went on."

"Huh?"

He smiled. "I know I would--just to prove our love was timeless...I'd HAVE to go on--even though life without you would be like living without half of myself," he admitted.

She looked at him, her eyes wide. "Why is it," she said, "that when I think ye can't amaze me anymore, ye come out with the most beautiful things?"

He smiled as he embraced her. "I guess I'm just a profound kind of a guy," Tim O'Neill said, gently stroking her neck.

She smiled at him, and reached up to kiss his cheek. "Aye," she agreed. "That ye are, eudail. That ye are."

The words of the song came back to her, a song she deliberately refused to listen to all these months as the long search went on. They grabbed her soul and the speech sitting in her pocket was nullified by their presence in her heart.

She would speak her heart and not the pretty platitudes that the UEO brass wanted to hear. This service wasn't for McGath, or the presidents of the confederations, or the press or anyone else, really. It was for Katie and Ben, and Del and Theodore O'Neill, and Marcus Ford--all those who had been left behind. All those who had to live with the pain of being left behind. 'Tell them not to give up, either', Katie had told her. She felt the fear and the trepidation leave her, to be replaced with the sorrow and the anger and the hope that had buoyed her through these long months, that would have to buoy her until they told her, proved to her beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were dead. Because she didn't believe it. Not when she felt his presence in her heart, this second, this moment.

"Ladies and gentleman," Secretary McGath said, "I present Lieutenant Aislinn E. MacMurdo, Communications Officer of the seaQuest, to say a few words in memory of her crewmates."

She sat up in her chair, collecting her thoughts. _Aye,_ she thought. _I'll say a few words. Not what you quite want to hear, but I'll say a few words._ She stood up, and slowly walked to the podium. The might of the UEO leadership was in this room, in her sight. The world watched her, via the cameras in the balconies and the aisles. They would hear her every word, and they would be captured and immortalized, to be listened to forever.

But all she saw was the three dozen or so that she knew by name. Rose Piccolo. Del O'Neill and her two youngest girls, Jo-Anna and Alex. Mariana Ortiz, Mig's sister, and her baby, Marta Juanita. Marcus Ford. Ben and Katie. Kristin. She had to go on--for them.

"Good Morning," she said, her voice shaky. She noticed a movement in the back then half smiled. The Admiral, her grandfather, late as always, tipped his cap to her as he sat down.

"My name is Aislinn Elizabeth MacMurdo. And I'm here to speak in memory of the UEO vessel forty-six hundred--the--the Deep Submergence Vessel-- seaQuest." Her voice cracked on the name of her boat. "She's a good boat," she said. "The best to ever sail the seven seas and I was proud to serve her. And Nathan Hale Bridger," she continued, knowing the next statement would severely tweak some of the dignitaries sitting in the room, "is the finest captain to ever serve in ANY man's navy, and I was proud to serve him, too."

Ben smiled, and gave her a thumbs up.

Linn went on. "Her crew was the finest the UEO had to offer, the finest men and women to ever step foot on a vessel. Some of those who once served on seaQuest sit here, in front of me now, and I am proud to call them friends. Some who sit here I know, because I served with their sons and daughters, and I'm proud to have done so. My LIFE was that boat...my friends and my heart, were on that boat. The seaQuest was my whole life. I defied incredible odds to serve on her. And for except WHATEVER ye care to call it, Fate, God, Providence, CHANCE--I would be out there, with them. But for whatever reason God saw fit, I was left behind. I was left, with you, to go on."

She took a deep breath, and took the plunge. "So I stand here today, yes, to honor the memory of the MISSING. The missing I say, because I refuse to believe they are gone." She ignored the collective gasp that ran through the cathedral. "I believe, in the depths of my heart, that somewhere, some HOW, they are still alive, and until they show me the rottin' husk of the seaQuest on the bottom of the sea, I'll never **stop** believin' they are alive!" She dashed away an errant tear that had wandered down her cheek. "To believe that they are gone forever, never to return, would sully the memory of my friends and the man I love more than life itself. The man I'd die a THOUSAND times for, just to feel his hand in mine again, to hear his voice comfort me in the deep of the night, when I am afraid."

She was weeping openly now, unable to stop, the words tumbling out of her mouth. "Call me mad, if ye like," she whispered into the microphone, "but to my friends....know. Know that I believe, with you, that they are not gone." She bowed her head. "The words a song, came to me, a song I haven't been able to listen to for months. A song, that says, better than I, how I feel." She cleared her throat for a moment, and began to recite the words.

"Every night, in my dreams I see you," she whispered, " I feel you. That is how I know you go on. Far across the distance and spaces between us, you have come to show you go on."

Her voice grew stronger. "Near, far, wherever you are, I believe that the heart does go on. Once more, you open the door, and you're here in my heart, and my heart will go on and on."

She took a deep breath, and continued, looking at Tim's mother as she said it: "Love can touch us one time and last for a lifetime, and never let go till we're gone. Love was when I loved you, one true time I hold to. In MY life, we'll always go on."

The melody came back to her, even though she did not break into song. Ser raised her chin slightly, and the crowd was reminded of an ancient masthead figure, an alabaster statue, her face to the wind, jaw defiant, as the words left her mouth:

"Near, far, wherever you are, I believe that my heart will go on. I'll stay, forever, this way, you are safe in my heart. They're here, there's nothing I fear, and I know my that heart will go on and on."

She lowered her head, and swallowed hard, as she spoke for the last time: "God, watch over them," she said, "and bring them home safe." She nodded once to McGath and the priest, then slowly walked down the steps of the dais to sit between Ben and Katie.

The crowd was so stunned, so awed, there was total silence in the great cathedral for what seemed like forever. Then Ben began to clap, slowly and loudly. Then Katie joined him. Kristin stood to her feet, and, turning to Linn, applauded her. The applause started slowly and within a few seconds, was deafening. It was possible that it could be heard all the way across the Potomac.

Linn didn't hear any of it. All she heard was a quiet voice in her ear, and the impossible brush of fingertips against her cheek.

 _Thank you, eudail,_ Tim said.

She raised her face to the crucifix above the altar, tears streaming down her face. "I miss you, Tim," she whispered through her tears. "Please come home."

**Author's Note:**

> Katie Hitchcock, Ben Krieg, Kristen Westphalen, et al., were created by Rockne O'Bannon, and are property of Amblin Television. Aislinn MacMurdo is an original creation. The lyrics of 'My Heart Will Go On' were written by Will Jennings.


End file.
